


Deja Vu

by Uniasus



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen, Horde life, Memory Loss, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 22:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16962942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: Once, twice, thrice...how long does it take to realize someone is messing with your head? And if Shadow Weaver really does regularly erase memories, what can you trust?





	Deja Vu

The new girl on the bunk below sniffed and cried. It was the fourth night of tears, and Catra was having none of it. The rest of the cadets in the dorm might have been able to fall asleep due to exhaustion, but Catra’s heightened hearing made girl’s sniffles extra annoying and hard to ignore.

Groaning, she swung her feet over the side of the top bunk and dropped to the ground. At eight, she’d already mastered the talent of landing quietly, so the new girl didn’t realize she had company until Catra kicked her in the stomach.

Lightly. Catra wasn’t that mean.

“Stop crying, I need to sleep.”

“S-sorry.” The blonde girl pressed her face deeper into the pillow, her voice muffled.

Catra stood next to the bunk, hands on her hips, watching the other girl. The crying didn’t stop.

Disgusted with both herself and the newbie, Catra sat on the floor near the girl’s head. “Why are you crying?”

The girl turned; a watery blue eye looked up at Catra. “I miss home,” she whispered.

Catra’s tail twitched with curiosity. “Home” was a concept she only applied to the Horde. She remembered no other place though she knew the Fright Zone’s borders didn’t stretch forever. There was the Whispering Woods, with its muttering, moving trees. There was Bright Moon, the main rebel base, nestled at the base of a mountain. There could be more.

“Tell me about it,” Catra demanded.

The girl pushed herself to sitting, wiping at her eyes. “You really want to know about Eternia?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful,” she began. “I used to watch the stars with... with someone. There’s be so many, and sometimes streaks of light would zoom by. There were large rocky cliffs, with orange and red stone. They were super taller, and not mountains. They’d be all by themselves. Nothing else around.”

Catra nodded, slowly building the new recruit’s–her name was Adora apparently–home in her head. The hot exhaust air she breathed became desert parchedness. The snores of the other cadets the rustle of bushes.

She jolted out of the image, snapping her eyes open, and Adora circled back to the sky. “We’d see Eferia in the night sky. Large and blue, with rings. I wanted to visit the planet one day.”

“Now you’re making it up. There’s no planet in the sky.”

“Is too! There’s Eternia, the first planet. And Etheria, the second. And Eferia, the third-“

“Shut up, you’re crazy.” Hissing, Catra scrambled up into her own bunk.

But the image wouldn’t leave her mind. Catra dreamed of planet-filled skies so much that when they were doing exercises outside the next day, she kept looking up. She nudged Adora when she got the chance. “See, no planet?”

Adora pouted, and Shadow Weaver called Adora to her for a private session. It made sense, she was new and needed the extra training. No doubt, it’d tire Adora out, she’d want to go to bed early, and Catra could follow her to demand to know more about Eternia. Fake it might be, but it still sounded magical.

Except Adora refused to tell her anything.

“Tell me more about Eternia,” Catra pleaded that night after everyone else had gone to bed.

“I was sleeping, Catra.”

“And you can sleep again, soon. Just, describe Eternia to me again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re home. Where you're from.”

Adora gave Catra a sleepy glare. “I’m from here, of course. Just like you, just like everyone in this room. We’re all orphans Hordak gave mercy to, the Horde is our home, and we’re lucky enough Shadow Weaver decided to look out for us.”

“Right. Orphans.”

Catra backed away and crawled into her own bunk. She stayed awake, thinking, as Adora slept undisturbed below.   

Right now, every kid in this room would say the Horde and the Fright Zone was the only home they ever knew. Catra used to find that nice to know, being surrounded by others who got it like you did. But now she wondered if that was the truth; them _all_ being orphans felt too coincidental. But her brain couldn’t come up with another answer to the word “home”.

* * *

When they were eleven, Catra came across Adora huddled in a dark corner. “What are you doing?”

Adora didn’t answer. She didn’t even move, and a nugget of concern had Catra squatting down to catch her friend’s eye. Adora buried her face into her arms further.

“Adora, what’s wrong?”

“We’re supposed to be the good guys, right?”

Catra’s tail lashed. “What do you mean?”

“The Horde. We’re the good people. The princesses are evil, they can’t control their own powers and must be stopped. We’re the good side, trying to bring order to Etheria.”

“Of course.”

“ _Then why did I just see Shadow Weaver kill a Force Caption who disobeyed orders?”_ Adora’s voice was a low hiss, cattier than Catra, being part cat, managed on an average day.

“You saw what?” Catra leaned forward and, mindful of her claws, did her best to pry apart Adora’s forehead and forearms. “Adora. Hey, Adora. Look at me.”

Slowly, Adora lifted her chin. Her blue eyes were wide, terrified even, and beneath Catra’s hands Adora’s minutely trembled. Instantly, Catra wedged herself into Adora’s space to give her friend a hug.

“Tell me what you saw.”

And Adora did. How she’d waited outside Shadow Weaver’s door for an appointment, but how it was cracked open just a bit. And Adora wanted to see Force Caption Json. She was an amazing warrior, someone Adora planned to be like in the future. But Shadow Weaver didn’t like that Json had disobeyed orders; she’d failed to raze a rebel outpost. And when Json argued why, said that good people didn’t destroy villages, Shadow Weaver had grown and grown until her shadow tendrils of hair wrapped completely around Json and Json... disappeared. Except for her Force Captain pin, which had fallen loudly to the floor.

Adora had run. Because why would good guys do something like that? Kill someone not performing a duty. Maybe she had been a secret spy. But regardless, something in Adora’s gut had said _this scene is wrong_.

So here she was, huddled in a corner, and asking Catra, “Is the Horde full of good people?”

“Am I a good person?” Catra asked back.

“Yes,” Adora said.

“Then the Horde has good people. It has you. It has me. And I’m sure Json is fine and Shadow Weaver just sent them somewhere.“

Were the Horde good people? Catra couldn’t help but wonder while she laid curled at Adora’s feet. They weren’t kind people, there was too much backstabbing for that, but they could still be good. Couldn’t they?

The next day, when Catra asked Adora if Json’s death still bothered her, Adora said yes. Because the Horde had lost a brilliant Force Caption, one so dedicated to peace she died while training. “She was my idol,” Adora admitted, “of course I’m upset she’s gone. But I’ll get over it. Losing good people to a good cause is part of war.”

Catra frowned but nodded to show her agreements.

She wondered if she’d seen anyone killed and didn’t remember either.

* * *

At fifteen, on a day when Catra had decided to impulsively skip training, her squad went on a field trip. They’d been taken to a nearby outpost, not far from Plumeria, for environmental training on the steppes near the border of the kingdom’s Heart Forest.

When they returned, most of them looked shocked and sick. It was hard to tell with Rogelio, being part crocodile. But Kyle had a lost expression, Lonnie’s dark face had taken on that gray tone it did when she felt queasy, and Adora... Adora looked moments away from bolting.

They had never been a chatty bunch, but the way they glanced at each other was telling. They kept looking for comfort and confirmation from each other. And each time a person locked eyes with another to sees the same desire reflected back, the tension only increased.

Something scared them.

At bedtime, Catra locked the door to their dorm room. The _click_ echoed.

“Spill. What has you all spooked?”

As one, the team looked to Adora. Catra wasn’t surprised. As the best fighter, Adora would most likely lead their squad once they saw active duty. Plus, she had the best relationship with Catra.

“You know how the Horde preaches that we’re restoring order? Attacking rebel bases, taking down enemy combatants? That the princesses are monsters?”

“Yeah. It’s what we’re striving to do. Make the world better.”

Lonnie scoffed. Catra ignored her.

“We’re,” Adora looked around at Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio, getting support and seeing the same thing in their faces. “We’re not sure that’s true.”

Catra frowned. “Did you meet a princess, and she scrambled your mind?”

“I mighta preferred that,” Kyle said softly.

At this point, Catra was getting worried.

“The training was simple. They dropped us in a random location, minimal supplies, and told us to make our way back to the outpost. Before we left, they mentioned a ruined rebel base and that it was to be used as a map marker and nothing else. The buildings were unstable, we shouldn’t enter.” Adora wrung her hands. “We didn’t realize what it was when we entered. The wind had kicked up a bit of sand, and I never expected a rebel base to be so flat. Ours are so tall.”

“It’s my fault,” Kyle said. “I complained about the sand in my face.”

“It bothered everyone,” Rogelio said, placing a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. It didn’t seem to help Kyle’s mood.

“We went into the first shelter we found,” Adora continued, gaze drifting back, “And we found ourselves in a one-room home. Bed, bathtub, a table and chair. It smelled really bad.”

“We thought spoiled food,” Lonnie hugged herself. “Turns out, there were two bodies in a corner. Mom and a kid.”

“Kill shots,” Adora’s voice was bland. “Straight to the head for the pair of them.”

“Shit,” Catra said. “Did the rebellion do that?”

Rogelio shook his head while Kyle’s trembling got worse. Lonnie looked at the floor. After another glance at her team, Adora whispered, “We think the Horde did it.”

“What?” Catra kept her hiss low. “No way.”

“When the wind died down, we looked around. It was a civilian village, Catra. And scattered through the rubble was robot units with the Horde logo on them.”

“Maybe they were rebels in disguise.”

“We found no evidence of that,” Lonnie bit out. “We wanted to be _sure_ we understood things. We went through every building. Even got back to the outpost two hours after our goal because we _had to be sure.”_

“Are you?” Catra asked, looking Adora in the eyes.

“Yes.” She nodded, spine going steel-stiff as she put the words to their discovery. “The Horde attacked the village and didn’t even give the civilians a burial. We found people half eaten...” she trailed off. As if on cue, Lonnie and Kyle shivered at the same time.

“Maybe it was just a rogue group?” Catra suggested, but it sounded weak. She hadn’t been there, she couldn’t know for certain, but her team was one of the best. If this was the conclusion her team came to, Catra would stand by it.

“What do we do now?” Kyle said. “I don’t want to fight for the Horde now, but...”

But what indeed. There were no defectors. There were only dead soldiers.

“I don’t either,” Adora said.

“I’m not telling Shadow Weaver that,” Lonnie cut a hand through the air.

“That would be suicide,” Catra snorted. “Of course not.”

“Sneak out?” Rogelio suggested. “We’ve got a good team, if we work together, and no one snitches...”

A tall order in the Horde, but they all looked so rattled Catra didn’t think anyone would rat out the rest of the group. They _all_ wanted nothing to do with the group that had done what they saw.

“We leave,” Adora said. Her voice was sure. Commanding. Trustworthy. “It’ll take a while to come up with a plan, we’d need the right moment, but we’re doing it. We’ll... find a place in the Whispering Woods. Remove ourselves from the princesses and the Horde. Are we all in this?”

She looked them each in the eye: Kyle, Lonnie, Rogelio, Catra. They all gave a stiff nod.

“Good. We can start tomorrow night, I’m exhausted, as who knows what Shadow Weaver has planned for us tomorrow.”

They went to bed and spent the next day completing a relaxed training regimen of light weights and analyzing previous battles. Shadow Weaver pulled them aside for individual tests, but nothing happened to indicate that their plan to leave had been discovered.

Excited to start planning, Catra turned to Adora as soon as they squad were alone in the dorm room, door locked behind her.

“So what’s the plan?”

“What plan?” Adora asked.

“For leaving the Horde.”

From across the room, Lonnie laughed. “Leaving the Horde? The Fright Zone is the safest place to be. The only people striving to make the world better. Why leave?”

“Because... of your training mission yesterday?”

“It was a normal training mission,” Rogelio said. “Nothing special.”

Confused, but with blooming understanding, Catra watched them all nod.

“The Horde is our home, Catra,” Adora said. “Why would we leave?”

“Just for fun,” Catra gave a sly grin. “Sneak out for a night.”

“Good luck doing that,” Lonnie scoffed as she climbed into her bunk.

One by one, they settled into sleep. Catra stayed awake the longest, eyes closed and thinking. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen evidence of altered memories in her squad mates, but all of them at the same time? The Horde wasn’t randomly doing it; it was a specific and widespread problem. No doubt, Catra lacked memories too, though she couldn’t identify them.

If Adora knew them, Adora never said. Just like Catra had never asked her about Eternia after that one night.

_Is the Horde full of good people?_ Eleven-year-old Adora asked in Catra’s memories.

Catra used to think the majority in the Horde were good people. Now, she wondered if the most important people in the Horde weren’t, and if losing your memories of being good could make you bad. If you don’t remember another home, or compassion, the swings in your own moral compass, could you still know something was wrong?

Catra turned over at the foot of the bed to look at Adora’s sleeping face.

You probably could, Catra decided. You might not remember being good, but you still could be. Unless the Horde brainwashed people in addition to wiping memories.

Catra shivered at the though and edged up the bed. Instead of sleeping on Adora’s feet, she curled up in the crook of her knees.

* * *

At seventeen, in the ruins of a civilian town that might have been the front for a group of rebels, Catra again heard Adora explain that the Horde is evil and she can’t stand by and be a part of it.

Adora had had this revelation five times. If Catra had it, she didn't remember. But she did know that if Adora didn’t come back, Shadow Weaver couldn’t wipe her memory. Adora could finally _act_ on the idea of good that shone through her skin. And it literally _shone through her skin_ when she transformed.

Part of Catra was really, _really_ upset. How dare Adora turn into a princess? Because her taking out a tank was the perfect example of a princess not in control of her powers. Adora had walked into a dangerous thing, that was nothing new, but doing it in the company of strangers whom she already smiled at so brightly?

How dare Adora’s version of freedom from the Horde’s manipulation not be Catra’s? It wasn't, _let’s lead it and make it better_. It was _let’s leave everything I know, everything bad, behind_.  Catra knows it’s silly to be upset at it. It’s not like they had been open with each other about what they suspect had been done to their heads. They never planned. But Catra had also never anticipated that that Adora, free of what magic Shadow Weaver had done, would leave people behind her when she left.

She’d tried to take the whole squad before. Why not now? Who were the people she’d spent the last couple of hours with?

In the end, it didn’t matter. Adora fought, and won, and stayed. She didn’t return to the Horde, and in the mess of feelings that created in Catra’s stomach, one of them was relief-mixed pride.

_Be what you could have been, should have been, without Shadow Weaver’s interference,_ Catra thought, looking back towards the smoking remains of tanks. _One of us should._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys....
> 
> This bunny hit between the other two longer She-Ra fics I have. And really hit hard. But they're coming! In the meantime, enjoy this one, and you can always stalk me on Tumblr as [Uniasus](uniasus.tumblr.com)


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